International Law Blog

Despite the fact that there is no any particular armed conflict and civil unrest in Ethiopia, it’s becoming common to see persons under the age of 15 carrying a gun in different parts of the country. Although these pictures has been looked as fun by so many people, it becomes more serious when the children carrying the gun used some flags and have some connection with organized groups and parties in the country. Based on this assessment, there is a worry that in any case…

The human rights profile of Ethiopia and Eritrea have been infamous. Both countries have criticised by the leading UN human rights bodies, regional and NGOs. Now, these countries are making history by torn down the wall of resentment built after bloody boarder war. Would this new chapter of rapprochement enable them to revamp their human rights profile? Before examining the role of rapprochement for the improvement of human rights, it is worth to glance a laconic view of major events held in the past few…

Abstract While WTO laws are international treaties and hence part of international law, they were not as such regarded as they are found in that corpus. As a result, the role of other public international law within the WTO dispute settlement is not yet clear. In that whether, the dispute settlement body of the WTO in deciding cases would consult the rules and principles of other public international laws is not well articulated. The paper will examine the applicability of other international laws in the…

The applicability of international frameworks, in general, depends initially on the status a given country gives to international instruments in its legal system. Its commitment begins with the clear statement it makes regarding the status and application of those ratified instruments. This is why usually States determine in their domestic legislations status related issues such as incorporation, hierarchy, implementation mechanisms, implementing institutions, etc of international instruments. This topic briefly discusses the status and applicability of juvenile justice related international instruments, particularly the ACRWC and the…

Speaking of the current Russia-Ukraine crisis, here is an interesting but less visible international legal dimension to the story. Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union, during which time it had possessed huge stockpile of nuclear weapons arsenal – actually the third largest stockpile in the world at the time. Russia would not have ventured into Crimea today had Ukraine maintained possession of those nuclear weapons. What happened in 1994 was dramatic, and a bit embarrassing for Ukraine. At the end of the…

World Trade Organization (WTO) was established with the main objective of liberalizing multilateral trade, based on the belief that the liberalization of trade brings multiple of benefits to the world population. To this end, the preamble to the Agreement Establishing the WTO (Marrakesh Agreement), provides that “[t]he Parties to this Agreement, recognizing that their relations in the field of trade and economic [endeavor] should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of…

Human rights are to be respected and protected by States through all appropriate measures, so goes the rhetoric. States must also make solutions available at domestic level to any citizen who claims his/her rights were violated. Individual victims of human rights violation also have the right to seek justice from regional or international institutions. In some countries such violations are committed grossly & systematically that the normal procedures through domestic justice appear to be not enough to address them. Mostly, such systematic & gross violations…

Abreha Z. Mesele has written (ICC and African Union: Selective Justice?) an informative piece on the recently inflamed ICC-African Union altercation; or rather African Union’s ringing condemnations of the practice of ICC, calling it big-powers’ instrument of ‘pummelling the weak ones’. In this piece I would like to offer some of my views on the issue, by way of a response to Abreha’s paper. Abreha has accomplished the task of laying out the essential introductory ground-work, and so I will refrain from any redundancy and…

Before I embarked upon the merit of the issue, some preliminary issues should be discussed to see whether International Criminal Court (hereinafter called ICC) is targeting Africans or not. In order to arrive at a fair and balanced conclusion, there is a need to discuss how the ICC exercise jurisdiction over the most heinous crimes by taking ICC Statute (Rome Statute). Here, issues of membership, complementarity, referral and treaty obligations should first be addressed in order to ascertain on the claim that ICC is selective…

I will try to make this short essay as perceptive as possible and I will try to avoid legal jargon. Legal jargon is thought to make a writer’s essay water-tight, however, I think this is a misperception, and such language should only be used when it is necessary to describe something accurately- with the right context, meaning and empirical reference. I do this because I do not want my reader to feel alienated by merely looking at the title. I think it is better to…